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Announcing Scholar Salon 15: Register for October 21

When the Moon and Sun are Daughters of Mother Earth: Analysis of Basque Cosmology
with Idoia Arana-Beobide

Wednesday, October 21, 2020
3 pm Eastern Daylight Time 

Register for this live online event: scroll to the bottom of this post to login.

Eguzki Amandrea, the Mother Sun (amaroa.com)

What does it mean to have a feminine worldview?  How does it manifest?  The recently inaugurated exhibit in Bilbao (Basque Country, Spain) titled ‘Izen Izan’ (to name, to be) cited the “Dominion of the feminine: The matriarchal character of Basque mythology.“ And yet, little was explained about the meaning of the words ‘dominion’, ‘matriarchal’, or what the divine feminine might mean in a society.

Ilargi Amandrea, the Mother Moon (amaroa.com)

The Basque are enigmatic peoples, considered ‘Europe’s mystery people,’ that live in Europe along the Pyrenees mountains facing the Atlantic Sea, between France and Spain.  Marija Gimbutas mentioned that Basque mythology shows clues of the ancient matriarchal pre-Indo-European worldview.  Furthermore, since the Basque language is the only indigenous non-Indo-European language surviving in Europe, the Basque remain with a strong adherence to their ancestral origins.  Even if the present Basque culture has been molded by influences of Indo-European and Latin (Christian) acculturalization, the language and the ancient belief systems tell us of a reality of a feminine-centered worldview.   

I will introduce the feminine elements extant in Basque society, as Heide Göettner-Abendroth’s theory of Modern Matriarchal Studies entail.  I will explain the principles of its innate Basque mythology, and scholarly interpretations of the reality of the world when the three celestial bodies that sustain life for humans: the earth, the sun, and the moon, are all feminine. To conclude, I will analyze the role of women in these systems in Basque traditional society, and its meaning and possibilities for contemporary life.

Idoia on the beach in Basque Country

Idoia Arana-Beobide is co-founder of ‘Network on Culture,’ home of the online journal Matrix: A Journal for Matricultural Studies and the Global Matricultures Research Network. She is also the Managing Director of Douglas Cardinal Architect Inc., a leader of Organic Architecture.  A student of humanism, Idoia graduated with Museum and Interdisciplinary Studies in Medieval History and holds a MA in Religion and Public Life.  Idoia is a Euskalduna (Basque speaker) presently researching the source and manifestation of Basque identity through mythology and matriculturalism. 

Save these dates for upcoming Salons

November 4 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
Beyond the Trees: Ecofeminism and Connections to Current Movements for Change
Jeannette Kiel

November 18 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
Hieroglyphic Thinking
Normandi Ellis

December 2 at Noon Eastern Standard Time
Deep Economy: The Maternal Gift
Genevieve Vaughan

January 13 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
The Creative Soul in the midst of Winter
Jean Shinoda Bolen

Benefit of Membership - ASWM

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. 

Register
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Scholar Salon 14

ASWM Scholar Salon 14: "Call your Mutha': A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene" with Dr. Jane Caputi, moderated by Simone Clunie, Wednesday October 7, 2020.

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Announcing Scholar Salon 14: Register for October 7th

Call Your "Mutha’": A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene
with Jane Caputi

Wednesday, October 7, 2020
3 pm Eastern Daylight Time 

Register for this live online event: scroll to the bottom of this post to login.

The Anthropocene is the term for our current geological era, during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Jane Caputi's new book examines two major "myths" of the Earth, one ancient and one contemporary, and uses them to devise a manifesto for the survival of nature--which includes human beings--in our current ecological crisis. The myth of Mother Earth personifies nature as a figure with the power to give life or death, and one who shares a communal destiny with all other living things. The Anthropocene myth sees humans as exceptional for exerting an implicitly sexual domination of Mother Earth through technological achievement, from the plow to synthetic biology and artificial intelligence.

"Much that we take for granted as inferior or taboo is based in a splitting apart of inherent unities: culture-nature; up-down, male-female; spirit-matter; mind-body; life-death; sacred-profane; reason-madness; human-beast; light-dark. The first is valued and the second reviled." This perspective provides the framework for any number of related injustices--sexual, racial, and ecological. Caputi resists this pattern, in part, by deliberately putting the "dirty" back into the mind, the obscene back into the sacred, and vice versa.

Jane Caputi, PhD is Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University. She is the author of The Age of Sex Crime; Gossips, Gorgons and Crones; and Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture. She has also made two educational documentaries: The Pornography of Everyday Life and Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth. Jane is the winner of ASWM's Saga Award for Contributions to Women's History and Culture.

Save these dates for upcoming Salons

October 21 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time
When the Moon and the Sun are Daughters of Mother Earth. Analysis of Basque Cosmic Reality
Idoia Arana-Beobide

November 4 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
Beyond the Trees: Ecofeminism and Connections to Current Movements for Change
Jeannette Kiel

November 18 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
Hieroglyphic Thinking
Normandi Ellis

December 2 at Noon Eastern Standard Time
The Modern Matriarchal Gift Economy
Genevieve Vaughan

Benefit of Membership - ASWM

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. Continue reading for this Salon's Zoom Registration information.

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Announcing Scholar Salon 13: Register for September 23rd

 Redeeming Ancient Agriculture from the Dustbin
with Vicki Noble

Wednesday, September 23, 2020
3 pm Eastern Daylight Time 

Register

Modern industrial agriculture is divorced from nature and culture, making it difficult for most citizens to imagine what it was like originally when the tasks of planting, growing, and harvesting were fully integrated into the daily life, spiritual practices, and economic sustainability of Neolithic and/or indigenous cultures. When people understood the soil to be alive with microorganisms and helpful living creatures like worms, and when they understood the cycle of seasons to be an expression of sacred natural law, the practice of agriculture involved profound meaning, not high yields and market value.

Continue reading “Announcing Scholar Salon 13: Register for September 23rd”
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Scholar Salon 11

Scholar Salon 11: "Priestessing Earth-based Rituals for Modern Jewish Life," with Sarah Chandler, moderated by Heather Artemis, Wednesday August 12, 2020.

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